Remove ads

The Calculator (DC Multiverse, SI as canon character, Season 1 complete)

Created
Status
Ongoing
Watchers
1,195
Recent readers
0
Threadmarks
63
The Calculator
by TLPG (TimeLoopedPowerGamer)

Story summary: The world was not what it seemed...
Threadmarks Informational
Reader mode
Remove ads
The Office
  • Threadmarks
    • TLPG

    TLPG

    Location
    USA
    The Calculator
    by TLPG (TimeLoopedPowerGamer)

    Story summary: The world was not what it seemed. Too bad his only superpower was common sense and the world already thought he was a (very minor) supervillain.


    I was returning to my computer with a third cup of coffee when the heavily armed cosplayer walked past me, flipped a desk, and started strangling my boss.

    This was one of those moments that defines a person. How you think you'd react is just a lie you tell yourself, no matter how much of an Internet tough guy you are. Read the studies.

    For example, all that introspective garbage was going through my head when any sort of pre-planning for office violence scenarios would have had me running ten seconds ago.

    "Where is he?" the cosplayer yelled a second time. I'd missed the first shouted words in my panicking.

    "I d-don't know! I don't know what you're t-talking about!" My boss struggled, held several inches off the floor by his collar.

    The trendy open-office layout allowed the entire company to look on with growing horror. Back of the napkin calculations suggested three seconds until someone screamed.

    I hit the floor and crawled past my overturned chair, under the desk behind me, then sprinted through the tech startup's trendy kitchenette and out the back door as the screams started. Made it all the way to the parking lot at a full sprint and into the driver's seat of my car before I stopped and took a mental breath.

    Then I did the logical thing. The phone seemed to ring forever.

    "Nine-one-one operator. What's your emergency?"

    "Ah. Uh. I work at Clover Business Park, downtown." I rattled off the office's name and address. "There's someone attacking...uh, there's a man inside with a weird costume and a sword?" That wasn't a question. What was wrong with me? Oh. Panic and shock. Right.

    "Sir, where are you now?"

    "Uh. My car. The parking lot."

    "What's your name, sir?"

    I give her my full name, like I was filling it out on my taxes—middle name and everything—all in a panicked rush.

    "Sir, I need you to stay on the line. Help is on the way. Where exactly are you now?"

    "In the parking lot. Uh, I said that already. Outside the office."

    "Are you away from the attacker?"

    My fingers tightened on the steering wheel. "Yes? He was inside and I'm in my car, almost a block away."

    "Are you safe there, sir?"

    "Yes? And he was- he wasn't shooting but he was attacking someone. Choking them."

    "Okay sir, I understand. He wasn't shooting but he had a gun?"

    "Yes."

    "Sir, I need you to not attempt to reenter the building. Do not enter the building again. Please stay where you are and stay on the line."

    There was a short pause. The call was muted on her end, with no open line sounds. The woman came back with a weird tone in her voice. "Sir, from the information provided I have to ask this question based on Federal law. Sir, do you believe this is a supervillain attack?"

    "I...what?"

    "Did you recognize the costumed man? Can you give me a description of his costume and any powers he might have used?"

    I blinked, trying to remember every detail. "He was dressed as...Deathstroke, I think? Two-tone red and black mask, shoulder-slung sword, black combat suit with armored plates. Had a large pistol…but, I didn't see what type...or any, uh, powers? What is this about?"

    "Sir, this information is required for first response reasons." Another silent pause. "I have noted your description. It is consistent with a known supervillain. He is not listed as a potential disaster-area event, but you still need to stay away from the location of the attack. Again sir, please remain on the phone and stay where you are. Help is on the way."

    The phone made an alarm noise and vibrated like crazy. I jerked it away from my ear and looked down, hand shaking. The call window had a mute symbol over it and was minimizing down to a corner of the screen. A strange new app came up—really shiny user interface, several spinning icons, and high contrast black text on a bright white background, all moving as smooth as silk.

    The alarm ended and big, blocky text appeared centered on the screen. "Your position has been compromised with threat assessment certainty of 90%. Evade and hide protocols engaged."

    A map popped up, driving instructions underneath. I stared at the screen. Nothing like that was installed on my phone. The program was unfamiliar and the instructions-

    A digital clock was counting down from thirty-five seconds. At thirty-one, there was an explosion down the block from the direction of the offices I'd just fled. A tiny video window in a corner opened—what was the resolution on this thing anyway?—to show the costumed man stepping out of a hole in a wall. Looked like my company's building. The server room back wall, maybe? He stepped out of the rubble and onto the sidewalk.

    The image was clearly from a security camera and…my phone had just hacked it automatically? Somehow? The costumed man glanced up at the camera, paused, and just like in a movie a pistol appeared in his hand, drawn lightning fast from a holster on his leg. A casual gesture to one side, like swatting a fly, and he shot out the camera without looking. The app window went black, then closed.

    The costumed man was heading straight for the parking lot. My phone was warning me there were less than twenty-six seconds before he got here.

    My key fumbled against the ignition. The hybrid started almost silently. I pealed out and roared down the street, phone stuffed haphazardly in the center console. A block later, I slowed down and started making random turns. Sirens in the distance faded as I got lost in downtown traffic.

    Ten minutes later outside a Starbucks my phone directed me to, I did the worst parallel parking job of my life. My shaking hands held up the phone again and I saw what I should have checked before. The 911 call had apparently ended. The video window was still gone, but the "threat assessment" was down to 23%. Whatever that meant.

    There was also some symbol that looked like a compass with a line through it on the status bar. I clicked it and the words "Mode: Tracking Disabled," appeared, along with a list of what looked like GPS locations with cell tower icons next to them.

    I stared at the phone. It wasn't the phone I remembered putting in my pocket that morning. It was the same size and basic appearance. But it wasn't...right. It- no, this was all too much. The phone wasn't the most important part.

    Right now I had to start thinking about how to deal with having been in a workplace active shooter situation. But also how it had apparently been perpetrated by someone dressed as a comicbook villain.

    And how the 9-1-1 operator had acted like that sort of thing was real and expected. Her questions had turned really odd.

    This...this wasn't reality. Something was catastrophically wrong.

    I'd decided long ago what to do in this sort of...situation, but that had been idle speculation. The sort of discussion common to nerd bullshit sessions. The same sort of thing as zombie apocalypse planning. But it included that scenario as well.

    It went like this. If you found yourself suddenly pulled into a fantasy world, developing amazing superpowers all of a sudden after a trauma, or were tracked down by a wounded knight with a sword claiming you're the long-lost prince of a magical kingdom, the correct response is to check your mental health. Immediately.

    What's more likely? That everything you've ever known was wrong and this new situation was the real truth of the world; or that you're being tricked, gas-lighted, and slash or are just mentally unstable and having a schizophrenic break.

    The relative likelihood was...this was a perception failure. In the real world, judging super-powers versus psychotic breaks, from a statistical point of view, always, one hundred percent of the time, fell on the side of psychotic breaks.

    If I started thinking I had been attacked by a real supervillain, or that I could fly and shoot lasers out of my eyes—well, I would have to assume I was crazy instead. But the emergency operator, the costumed man, the weird not-my-phone thing, it all had some rational explanation. I could work through this.

    Time to prepare for Google information overload. Coffee required. Maybe Starbucks sold straitjackets now.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Alright, this is interesting and I really like your approach. No ROB or his dumb truck, no reincarnation, no reality jumping, just suddenly everything starts going horribly wrong and this kind of start is fresh as hell
     
    Last edited:
    This is interesting. I would like to see this continued.

    And what supervillain is the SI supposed to be?
     
    Remove ads
    Please tell me this is information broker Calculator and not "Look at me, I wear a literal calculator for some stupid reason" Calculator.
     
    On SI characters
  • Informational
    • krahe said:
    Alright, this is interesting and I really like your approach. No ROB or his dumb truck, no reincarnation, no reality jumping, just suddenly everything starts going horribly wrong and this kind of start is fresh as hell
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Stories that start with a self-insert character talking to God, Death, or some other ROB usually disappoint me as well. Everything happening to the main character is for DC-canon sourced reasons.

    I'm aiming for more of a rationally built world with schizo-tech, magic, and superpowers. Economics and society should work based on realistic outcomes of these things existing. It doesn't look like our world.

    Crimson Doom said:
    Please tell me this is information broker Calculator and not "Look at me, I wear a literal calculator for some stupid reason" Calculator.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    This will be a smart, mastermind-style Calculator in a realistic world. Campy comics stuff like that won't be appearing, but the same themes might shine through occasionally as a nod and wink to the source material.
     
  • Informational
    • Coffee
  • Threadmarks
    • I stumbled out of my car, just remembering to take the keys. The barista had to ask twice for my order—I'd played with the weird new programs on my phone all the way to the front of the line without noticing. Ordering something at random, I sat at a table near the door, back to the wall, one hand clutching my phone and the other pouring too-hot coffee into my mouth.

    This wasn't my phone. Up close and not panicking, it was clear. The size was about right and it unlocked to my swipe code plus fingerprint, but not even the opening screen was right. Everything was oddly shiny, slick, with constantly moving animations. It didn't have any ports or buttons at all—Apple's wet dream. The frame felt unusually flexible and light. The screen bent almost in half without damage.

    I loaded a random YouTube video, checked the device settings, then ran a couple of tests. The screen's resolution and refresh rate were absurd, and my bandwidth was far beyond LTE. It wasn't running any OS version I knew of. Maybe something from a foreign market? And even if that were true, it still didn't have a consistent look and feel—like a rooted phone some enthusiast had spent way too much time on. There were a ton of custom apps installed, with bland default icons and weird names.

    For one crazy second I considered a scenario where a hacker took over my phone and changed both the software and hardware. Download more RAM for your PC, indeed. Perhaps I should ditch it. It might be related to the morning's violent events…that I was still not really processing.

    Right. Had to think this through. Top priority was violence, not my phone. A weirdly dressed man attacked the office. Was there some fan convention in town? Had this crazy guy wandered over from the Staples Center or something? I poked at a few online events lists and came up with...nothing.

    Not "no fan events this week in Los Angeles," but no comic or superhero movie events ever—none for Star Trek or Star Wars, either. And...the Staples Center was apparently now the "LexCorp Center," so named since...it opened in 1999, funded in large part by LexCorp to the tune of $120 million for naming rights for ten years, plus undisclosed additional money to lock up the rights for good in 2009. Multiple news stories agreed, from multiple news sources. Really.

    So...new tab. Nope, no search results on popular superhero, sci-fi, and comics movies or TV shows either. Literally no pages...except for Ronald Reagan's SDI.

    Interesting. There was a moderately popular annual "Western Comics Hoedown" in San Diego, but it was for...oh, naturally. Old-West themed serial comics. Ones about settlers, cowboys, and Native Americans.

    New search. Tap to open results in new tabs, tap, tap, tap.

    Umm...okay. Started out like you'd think in the 1920s. Cowboys and Indians. Focuses changed over the years. A lot of them were now about historic cultural problems faced by the Native Americans instead of mindless gunfights. Weird. I could totally dig this fandom, if it wasn't an oddly detailed pile of completely made-up shit.

    Close. Tabs.

    I checked again. It still wasn't April first.

    So. This phone, which was not my phone, had been hacked and I was getting hilarious redirects on Google and DuckDuckGo, plus some humorous fake Wikipedia pages. Some sort of DNS thing was my guess. It was always DNS. How this helped the crazy person who broke into my building was anyone's guess, but it seemed an odd coincidence if it was somehow unrelated. I hadn't entered any of my website passwords again on this phone and the secured sites for all my stuff, including email, were coming up fine. Maybe my password locker software had been compromised?

    In any case, I should be calling the police now. On another phone...but of course there wasn't a pay phone so I'd have to hope that feature wasn't compromised. Or borrow a phone, maybe.

    I had just been in a pretty serious violent situation. I had what was likely a piece of evidence, and had also sort-of fled the scene. The shock was starting to wear off and my coffee was almost finished. I was out of excuses.

    Thirty seconds into looking up the non-emergency number for the LAPD, a dialog box popped up, obscuring the screen. "Action contra-indicated by current threat profile. Gathering information for alternatives. Increasing user engagement level. Calculating…"

    A console screen straight out of a nineties hacker movie opened under it, text scrolling fast. The video from before of the maniac blowing up the server room played in a corner, looping over and over again at the point where the cosplayer looked at the camera. Red lines picked out spots on his face and the image froze. In a flash, it changed and the same thing happened to...a picture of me. Right now.

    A voice spoke directly in my ear. "Second level identity check complete. Initial threat analysis confirmed."

    I jumped, my phone dropping to the table. It was like someone had leaned over my shoulder and spoken directly into my ear.

    "Members of TriD Information Systems targeted by armed threat, ID Slade Wilson. Police already aware of threat. 34% chance of informational penetration of Los Angeles law enforcement databases by forces willing to sell information to Slade Wilson. Contact with LAPD not suggested at this time."

    The voice was really loud and clear, easily cutting through the noise in the crowded Starbucks. Looking around there was no one nearby. It didn't seem like anyone else heard it. No glances my way, no annoyed glares at the noise.

    "What the hell is going on?" I said to no one.

    "Narrowcast directional speakers targeting only the logged-in user," the voice instantly replied.

    It had an artificial tone to it, something subtly off, but the growly, L.A. Latina-accented voice still blew the Apple and Microsoft TTS voices out of the water. There was also a diagram on the screen that looked like overlapping arcs and a representation of a human head, seen from above, with the moving arcs hitting its ears.

    The voice continued. "General interest by threat Slade Wilson indicated by theft of company HR local and cloud-based files, as well as network routing logs. Specific interest or target not indicated directly. Company IT operations logs stolen from server room, along with company on-premise file storage. Your darknet infrastructure endpoints, inserted into the company's local network communications systems, are still secure based on access and network log analysis. Attack executed by a single USB-based attack package inserted directly into servers. No ongoing remote or local attacks detected. No worms detected. Services hashed, and CRC against ROM files in remote digital dead-drop storage location complete: pass. New index sets for all data integrity checks marked as 'suspect' from this point forward. Warning: five one-time security tokens remain for this operation. Note: these must be updated in person to preserve integrity of this security system. Scheduling reminder created. Calculating…

    "Primary, secondary, and tertiary identity profiles secure. All thirty-three extent, weak online identities secure. Current residence secured by previous TDIS HR identity spoofing and protection measures. Ongoing passive informational surveillance status: secure. On-site physical security status: nominal. For further inquiries, see: identity obfuscation measures, home-site security infrastructure, remote site procedures. Suggested next course of action: finish your coffee and return to home site. Threat analysis, calculating..."

    Another window opened and a series of wire-frame figures blurred through various poses and attacks. Numbers appeared and vanished. Areas were circled and highlighted, then immediately overlaid with new windows. From where I slumped in my chair, looking down at the phone, the angle was bad but the image was still crystal clear.

    "Hard-light engine countermeasures currently unavailable. Low likelihood of directly countering Slade Wilson in current condition. Escape after close-range encounter problematic. Top-level summary: suggest avoiding contact at all costs, including loss of current alternate identity."

    This...wasn't as easy to explain as web page spoofs and redirects. I slowly picked up my phone.

    The moment I touched the screen, my browser window opened again. Good. I wasn't going to sit here and talk to a phone in public—a magic super-phone which appeared to have a complex voice interface now.

    Manually looking up Deathstroke resulted in some obviously fake news stories as well as a deleted (and much debated) "not notable" Wikipedia page for an international super-criminal. Nothing else appeared in Google. Then the window folded away and another window opened. Then another, and another. I swiped through them, scanning as fast as I could. Criminal records, straight out of digitized FBI case files, leading back to the '90s. Something called the CBI had a more detailed-looking personal profile. Homeland Security reports on terrorism and international crime. Something called...The Agency? And...the fuck...Cadmus analysis of his superpowers and possible related genetic features.

    The phone slid out of my fingers, clacking against the table. I slugged back the—uh, tall mocha I guess it was—one last time.

    "What-" I coughed on lukewarm coffee dregs, tried again in a whisper. "What are- No, go back. What 'alternate identity'? What are you talking about?"

    The stolen, highly-illegal files minimized. My drivers license appeared on the screen. Then my employment records, letters from my bank, phone bills. All with my name on them.

    I took a deep breath. "Right. Okay. That's not an alternate identity. What do you think is my real name?"

    The phone spoke again, directly into my ears. "Top level security query detected. Optical protection factor engaged. Scanning all frequencies and meta-wavelengths to confirm identity."

    A green light flashed from the front of the phone into my eyes. I blinked, hard.

    "Confirmed. Reporting available information on public and other active identities: Current public identity established December 12, 2015. Original public identity wiped from all local systems. Date of this data deletion event not available. Documentation on this event not available. Secure visual output activated."

    The phone's screen went totally black, then a logo appeared in my vision, floating a few inches in front of my face. It flickered slightly, like a sci-fi hologram. Maybe from a visual equivalent of the audio system?

    It was a pair of dark shades, square and retro, on a green background.

    "Displaying primary branding for your online business identity: Calculator."
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • No really, who is the Calculator
  • Informational
    • Mohamud said:
    Are Wendy and marvin his kids in your version
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    If so, the SI doesn't remember them.

    Fieryfoxpaws said:
    Ok that was nice but there one thing who the heck is the calculator?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Minor DC villain. Criminal mastermind. Info broker. Someone who would sell you the answer to such questions--about other villains, at least.

    Many versions, including mine, don't have superpowers. Also, mine doesn't remember being the Calculator.

    Don't worry. I'll be explaining as I go, since he does know who the Calculator is but he doesn't know anything about this world's version of the character.

    achaput said:
    Dressed up as a calculator and tried to fight Batman, then became the villains' Oracle.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Batman'd.

    Likely didn't actually do the themed outfit, however.
     
  • Informational
    • Slade Wilson and a river in Egypt
  • Informational
    • Night_stalker said:
    Real question is, why is Slade breaking into a office for some cloud data?

    This is kinda overkill, no?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    J Corwin said:
    Slade and 'overkill' are old friends. My favorite scene is him realizing he can't fight Cassandra Cain at close range, and frag grenading himself to get her to back off.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Slade is made entirely from overkill. In this situation, the cloud data wasn't his only objective. He did a lot more than that, as the data barf reported. Breaking in and doing the computer hack itself might not even have been the point. I'm following canon by making him a planner, not a dumb thug. Cost-benefit analysis is his modus operandi. Barging in like that was for a reason that will become clear soon.

    Sceonn said:
    Really hoping that we're past the denial phase now, anymore and it'll just be annoying.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    SI hasn't even figured out what's going on yet, but irrational denial won't happen (for very long). One of the primary elements I'm exploring in this story is how the SI responds to apparently extreme changes in perception. Exploring how he sees himself and what he finds out about this new reality is what the first arc of this story is about. No "this isn't possible" ranting though.
     
  • Informational
    • TLPG said:
    Slade is made entirely from overkill. In this situation, the cloud data wasn't his only objective. He did a lot more than that, as the data barf reported. Breaking in and doing the computer hack itself might not even have been the point. I'm following canon by making him a planner, not a dumb thug. Cost-benefit analysis is his modus operandi. Barging in like that was for a reason that will become clear soon.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I'm just curious who would throw out cash for Deathstroke whn the job seems rather.... easy.
     
    Well written, and you did a great show-not-tell about being dropped into the SI. God, ASB scenes are the worst.

    Definitely watched.
     
    Stelarwand030 said:
    What does ASB stand for?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Alien Space Bat. It's a term coined somewhere in the history of the internet to refer to an all-powerful entity that changes something, such as inserting someone into another world, or sending something back in time.

    So, I was referring to the terrible scenes some people put at the beginning of the story, where they are talking to a god/jumpchan/ASB who explains that they will thrown into another world or whatever. Those scenes add nothing to the narrative, and serve the same function as a one sentence summary saying "I get thrown into X universe". When you SI, it's all hand-wavy bullshitium anyway, and we all know that, so you don't need exposition about it.
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top